Tell Qaramel and the Neolithic Cult of Severed Heads
Some would argue that human history begins in detail with the Iron Age. Although records survive in some particular locations from the earlier Bronze Age and there is much archaeology to pick over, we can only start to map the general course of our past once we have access to surviving histories, mythologies, and oral traditions.
We do know of Bronze Age civilizations, to be sure. But the problem with these is that they are almost all silent, and often disjointed due to the few surviving fragments of that time that remain. The further we go back, the less we can say for certain and the more speculative our conjectures become.
Travel back even further, into the Stone Age, and things become looser still. The search for civilization becomes intertwined with the search for the traces of any human occupation: often the “where” and the “how” come to the fore as we try to map the journey which led to the earliest civilizations.
But there are traces of complex civilizations even into the Neolithic, strange cults and gathering places which are so few and far between that they ask almost as many questions as they answer. The most famous of these outliers is probably Gobekli Tepe, a stone circle covered with animal carvings, like a smaller Stonehenge but 12,000 years old.
But it is with the human remains at Tell Qaramel, in modern-day Syria, that we get perhaps our most personal look into the beliefs of at least one Neolithic people, and their first steps towards creating a culture. This place, with its cult of the human head, offers an understanding into how our ancient ancestors really saw themselves.
A Stone Settlement Older than Agriculture
Generally it is assumed that humanity first started to build permanent settlements with the Neolithic revolution in agriculture. Once we figured out that food could grow where we wanted, rather than where we found it, everything began to change.
A new abundance in cereal crops, alongside the earliest domestication of animals, led to a population boom. We had taken our first steps towards mastery of our environment, and through this towards population centers, artistic expression, and civilization.
Not so at Tell Qaramel. This ancient site was occupied for millennia, from what is known as the “Pre-Pottery” period of the Neolithic right up until the Hellenistic period around the second century BC. There were people here before there was the agriculture to support them.
This site was obviously of enormous importance to the earliest people, who chose to congregate here before even they knew how to farm. Humanity was still ironing out the kinks of survival, and yet they chose to gather here and to venerate the place.
So what can the site itself tell us about the motivations behind this bold step forward? Tell Qaramel offers the first clue through its location: it lies in a river valley along what would have been a major trade route. These people were part of a network of interlocking cultures, dependent upon this interaction in an unexpectedly sophisticated way for the Neolithic.
Tell Qaramel itself is a large mound, literally made from the detritus of occupation. Most of the archaeology in the mound itself comes from later phases of occupation, however: the original site, underneath all the subsequent history, covers a much larger area than the mound itself.
Although we have known about the site since the 1970s 99% of the site remains unexcavated. Since 2011 the Syrian civil war has seen the site closed, but what we have found to date is fascinating.
Five stone structures stand at the heart of the earliest phase of occupation. These were apparently towers, two millennia older than the previous record held by the ancient walled city of Jericho. They vary in size and design, but the oldest appears to have been a gathering place.
This most ancient structure of all contains a central hearth flanked by two stone benches. What purpose this gathering place had, or whether the other towers had a similar or auxiliary function is unknown, but it may have something to do with the bodies.
Twenty individuals have been found buried at Tell Qaramel, but this is no ordinary cemetery. For a start, all the bodies are those of adults, and nobody knows where the children were buried.
Then there is the state of the bodies. Most were found with their heads removed, but this was no site of Neolithic executions. The heads appear to have been removed, carefully and precisely, after the individuals were dead.
We know of other such cults from the Neolithic, but none appear to be this old. Could we be looking at the first human inquisitiveness towards the meaning of consciousness, a fascination for the part of the body through which we sense the world around us, and a reverence for those who have died and are no longer “inside”?
This is purest speculation, to be sure. We do know some things for certain though: the earliest skulls suggest a diet which predates agriculture, but later ones show that the practice of severing heads was continued beyond the domestication of grain and the abundance that this brought. This was not a cult which changed with agriculture.
With so much of the site unexcavated, there is much still to learn about Tel Qaramel. All we can say for now is that it was a ritual center situated advantageously on a trade route. These people carved out their own identity and mythos within the context of a wider world.
But the Neolithic site has one more secret to impart. A copper nugget was found in the earliest layers. It appears the copper ore known as malachite is somewhere at the site, and it gave the Stone Age inhabitants a glimpse into their future.
They had no idea how to manipulate the metal. Attempts appear to have been made to drill a hole into it with stone tools, but these were abandoned as the metal was far too hard. But in their fascination we can start to map a route to the Bronze Age, and the mastery of metals which forever changed the world.
These ancient humans could see the way forward. They waited only for a spark of genius to show them how.
Top Image: The veneration of skulls is known from other ancient sites such as Jericho, but Tell Qaramel appear to be the earliest, and the site may have much to tell us about the development of human culture. Source: Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
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